All posts tagged ‘nostalgia’

Recently my son was given a 40 gallon tote box full of Playmobil toys. There are big pieces and little pieces, trees and beards, and s a tiny suitcase and a large tent. He is almost three and my youngest is five months old. Not really age appropriate some would say, and I would have to agree. Yet he loves his “peoples” and they keep him occupied for hours on end. So how is it that my motherly intuition did not instantly seek to banish these diabolical small toys from my home?

Well, we applied a little common sense to the situation. My husband and I took the box, reviewed all the pieces and evaluated what he could play with safely and what he could not. Little pieces went into storage for a future date, while big pieces, and a few small accessories for testing the situation, are being played with on a daily basis. He is having a great deal of fun with them. Occasionally we come across a little piece that is problematic and into the box it goes.

Photo: Free The Egg

When I was child I collected little toys from inside Kinder Eggs. Kinder Eggs are an Italian chocolate egg, the egg is hollow and inside is a plastic container with a small toy inside. Sometimes the toy is a figure, sometimes it is a toy in pieces for you to assemble. I had a small basket full of them, and believe me a small basket full of Kinder toys is a lot of Kinder toys. When I met my future sister-in-law, who I discovered had a passion for all teeny tiny things, I of course introduced her to Kinder Eggs. Recently, we were shocked to discover that you couldn’t bring them into the US.

Do you call yourself a gamer? Ever played a classic arcade game? How about Dungeons and Dragons? What about growing up in the 80′s or having a healthy appreciation of the Big Hair Decade? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are going to truly enjoy Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. It will have you nostalgic for Duran Duran, your old neon socks and acid washed jeans within a few pages. But even if you aren’t a fan of the 80′s, there is still a genuinely engaging story here that will keep you guessing right through to the end.

Ready Player One tells the story of Wade Watts, a high school kid in the year 2044. It’s a nasty future that lies just around the corner for all of us and like most people, Wade desperately wants to escape. He does this by spending as much time as possible living in the OASIS, a huge virtual reality landscape where you can be anyone and anything as you explore thousands of planets. Now the genius behind it all, James Halliday, has died and left behind the ultimate Easter Egg. Find it, and his company and fortune are all yours.

Wade and thousands of other “gunters” must solve clues left behind by the eccentric Halliday and find three virtual keys that open three virtual gates. The best way to figure it all out? Obsessively studying Halliday’s life and his fixation with the 80′s. Wade and his fellow gunters become scholars of the man and the decade of his youth in this pop culture filled sci-fi adventure turned cyber-quest with very real world implications. Oh, and if I haven’t convinced you yet, guess who reads the audio version? That’s right, the one and only Wil Wheaton. This book hits shelves today so go pick up your own copy and join the quest in Ready Player One.

I have had a love/hate relationship with end-of-year “Top Music” lists. At their best, they’re insightful, helping me save time and money by sorting through the morass of music out there and singling out the experiences I might enjoy most. At their worst, though, they are akin to a retelling of someone else’s dreams: abstract, solipsistic…

Too, these lists remind me of time’s petty pace, are beginning to highlight how the physical experience of listening to music has changed for me. I grew up listening to 45s and LPs. There were sounds and rituals involved in listening to vinyl that surprise me now when I remember them–as if they’ve emerged from some other person’s memories: the shoosh of an album as it slipped from its wrapper; the slight wobble of a diamond-headed stylus as it skimmed like an ocean bird just above a spinning disk; and the rhythmic, popping white noise of a needle circling in a redundant widow’s walk after the music had gone silent at the end of an album side. I once lived and relived these small moments regularly, but like solitude or liner notes they are no longer a part of my normal experience–and I am suddenly sad that they have passed without a more appreciative recognition of how they helped form me.

I remember the first iPod commercial with a clarity most people reserve for successful assassinations. Or their first kiss. I had a visceral, immediate reaction to the image of that modest-looking techie exploding into pulsating dance: I WANT TO BE THAT GUY! I wanted to experience music THAT WAY. I didn’t care about iTunes or understand what people smarter than me meant when they said, “The device is cool but the real game changer is going to be the iTunes software.” I didn’t foresee the demise of the music store or know to expect a loss afterward. I was happy to move beyond my CD changer, my boombox, my turntable. Delighted. I adore my iPod still, but it does not yet seem to be the communal memory-maker my older, clunkier sound systems were.

When my grandfather downsized to a modular home near the Jersey Shore, my dad inherited his phonograph player: a credenza-sized, rosewood-embedded console that clicked and whirred with a cantankerous mind of its own whenever I leaned into its belly to coax music from it. Sometimes I would have to beg for whole minutes before it deigned to play a record–with each attempt, the stylus would hover teasingly over my album and slooooowly begin its descent…only to jerk back and click off peremptorily.

“That thing is haunted,” my younger sister would cry out in annoyance after each fruitless exchange with the machine.

“Or…it just doesn’t like Duran Duran,” I’d reply helpfully.

In my memory, there is no sound as beautiful as my dad playing Walk, Don’t Run at full volume through the speakers of that console and out our back porch, late on sun-slanted summer afternoons.

My mom would fuss: “Dammit, Jack! The neighbors! They’ll complain!”

My tax-accountant dad, normally the peacekeeper, would shrug and just say, “Let ‘em. What are they gonna do? Call the police?”

Rock. And. Roll.

This is somewhat morbid…but I keep a list of moments that I believe will flash in my head when I die (decades hence, I hope). One favorite is of me playing on my mother-in-law’s expansive lawn with my children. I am lying flat and the earth is radiating heat upwards through the velvety grass into my back, the boys are tumbling like puppies over and around me, and the sky overhead is the most-amazing deep blue. Everyone is laughing and safe and Joni Mitchell is playing from a boombox. Nothing significant occurs in this moment (or in most of the others in my list)–it is simply a perfect moment where I am fully present, encased in a beautiful song.

Most of my cherished memories are tied to songs, actually–and I am probably not unique in that regard. That is why “Best Of” lists have merit, I guess, why we revisit the idea waning year after waning year. Their value is not as aesthetic barometers but as reminders of moments we have had and as promises paid forward on moments that haven’t yet occurred.

Web-surfing, I stumbled upon a bit of nostalgia that made me wonder what my kid will say when I tell him I knew a time when there was no World Wide Web. The website 11Best Old School Animated GIF’s lists some blasts from the past. Now icons of poor web design, these moving pictures used to be the gold standard. They made me laugh, they made me cry; but most of all, they made me feel quite old. A fun bit of nostalgia!